


Louder Than Words

by evewithanapple



Category: Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: F/M, Misses Clause Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-19
Updated: 2011-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-27 12:57:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/296092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evewithanapple/pseuds/evewithanapple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marriage means sometimes having to bail your husband out of jail.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Louder Than Words

**Author's Note:**

  * For [meredyd](https://archiveofourown.org/users/meredyd/gifts).



If there is one thing Katherine Plumber is good at, it’s looking brave. She can be downright terrified, quaking all the way down to her shoes- has been, on more than one occasion- but no matter what she’s feeling, she has always been able to look whoever she’s talking to right in the eye and demand their respect. It’s a skill that comes in handy, when you’re one of New York’s few female reporters.

(According to Jack, she _is_ brave- and beautiful and brilliant and generally amazing. She tries not to pay that much heed. For one thing, it’s _Jack_. For another, believing your own press- especially when it comes from someone you’re also married to- almost never ends well.)

But whether or not Jack’s opinions of her is correct, it’s the skill she knows she has that allows her to march up to the front desk of the police station without quailing. The man sitting behind the desk- apparently not high enough in the ranks to have earned a name plate- doesn’t even bother to look up. “Can I help you?”

“Katherine Plumber,” she says, pleased to note that her voice doesn’t waver at all. It’s the first impressions that count the most. “I’m here for two of the men you arrested tonight.”

That does get his attention, albeit only enough to make him raise his head. “Names?”

“Jack Kelley and David Jacobs,” she says swiftly. Come to think of it, she actually isn’t sure how many men were arrested tonight- just that Jack and David were among them. One of the benefits of working for the paper is that she gets tips like these ahead of time. Of course, she might not have gotten their names at all, had Jack not- from the sounds of it- singlehandedly started a riot.

As soon as she got him out, she was going to kill him.

The man at the desk was looking back to his ledger. “Do you have bail money?”

She drops the dollar bills on his desk without blinking, and is pleased to note that his eyes widen as he takes it in; he clearly wasn’t expecting her to be able to come up with the money. She breezes on through. “Will there be any charges?”

He’s still blinking owlishly at her. “A- a fine probably. Nothing you can’t handle, I’m sure.” Belatedly, he closes his mouth. “Sorry, what was your name?”

“Katherine Plumber,” she says briefly. Chances are he won’t recognize it; her union work is all under her married name, and few people know her newspaper work well enough to recall who wrote it. “With the New York Sun.”

She breezes past him without further conversation. For one thing, she hasn’t got time for it- they’ve already been in there for at least an hour, and while she hopes they haven’t come to any blows with the other inmates, she’s heard stories of what can happen in holding pens. For another, she still has to get home and finish the article she was working on before one of her contacts at the newspaper had arrived to tell her that her husband had been arrested.

She really is going to kill him.

Once she reaches the holding cell, they aren’t hard to find. David is hanging close to the bars, eyeing the other inmates worriedly, Jack leaning against the wall by his side, looking insufferably smug. She clears her throat. “Were you intending to spent the night here? Because I have things at home to get back to.”

They both look up at the sound of her voice. David, being David, has the grace to look slightly abashed. Jack, being Jack, looks nothing of the sort. She gestures to the guard, who moves to unlock the cell door. “I could have left you here all night, you know.”

“But you’d miss me.” Jack says, winking broadly. Next to him, David blushes slightly. The guard, looking just as bored as the desk clerk, ushers them both out. “Keep out of trouble from now on, then.”

“It seems unlikely,” Katherine says tartly. Jack is sporting a fresh bruise on his cheek, and David is favouring his right side as he walks. It was too much to hope for, she supposes, that they would’ve have avoided sustaining battle wounds. She jerks her head towards the exit. “Let’s go.”

Once they’re outside, she looks them both up and down. Now that she’s seeing them close-up, it’s slightly worse than it looked inside- the bruise on Jack’s cheek “is accompanied by a cut that’s still bleeding lightly. She starts to reach out to see how bad it is, then checks herself. They are still standing on a public street; besides, she’s still angry with him. “Well? What happened?”

David clears his throat awkwardly. “Well- Sarah’s husband is with the streetcar drivers, and since their union was having a meeting tonight and he’s laid up, and asked me to take her-”

“The other guy started it.” Jack breaks in. Katherine shoots him a frigid look, then turns back to David. “And?”

“Well, the cops showed up,” David says, still rubbing at his side. “And they were being quiet enough at first, but a few of the men started shouting at them-”

“Wasn’t me.”

“And then,” David continues, ignoring Jack, “someone swung a punch- I didn’t see who- and of course all hell-” he checks himself, looking sideways at her. She rolls her eyes. She’s heard worse. “-well people started panicking, running for the exits, and that made the cops angrier. One had this woman by her hair, and Jack saw, and- well, he knocked him over.”

“Think I might have knocked him out,” Jack says proudly. Katherine pointedly does not comment.

“Anyway, he had a friend with him,” David finishes, “so he grabbed us both and dragged us out. And that’s how we ended up at the station.” He lets out a heavy breath, then winces. “Sarah got out before people started fighting, though.”

“You should get home to her,” Katherine says, and David nods gratefully before making his way off down the street, towards his sister’s apartment. “And as for _you_ -”now she turns the full force of her glare onto Jack- “I suppose that cut needs looking after. And I still need to finish my work.”

He still doesn’t look the slightest bit ashamed of himself. Of course he doesn’t.

 

 

* * * *

 

“Katherine?”

“Hmm,” she says, not looking up from her typewriter. She really does need to finish this story.

“You almost finished?” He’s right behind her, she knows without looking, bare-chested and still holding a wet towel to his face, having discarded his shirt when they got home. She is not going to look. It would destroy any attempt to finish the evening’s work.

Of course, the fact that he’s now kissing her hair isn’t helping.

“Stop that,” she orders, trying not to shift in her seat. “I’m working.”

“Almost done?” Now he’s moved down to her collarbone. This is the height of unfairness, and they both know it, but that’s never stopped him before.

She is _still_ not going to look. “I would be, if I hadn’t had to leave for the police station an hour ago.”

“That’s a shame.” He’s moving dangerously close to her neck now. She is never going to get this story done. “No time to spare for your injured husband?”

“Perhaps if he hadn’t caused the injury himself.” Now he’s arrived at her neck. Getting work done really is a lost cause now, so she turns in her chair to glare at him. “You really do make it impossible to get work done, you know.”

“Newspaper work, maybe,” he says, and kisses her. She makes an effort not to kiss him back, she really does. But among her many talents- including the ones Jack ascribes to her- resisting her husband when he’s like this is not one of them.  She comforts herself with the fact that her willpower is strong in all other areas. The kiss is shorter than she’s like- although if she had her say, it would have taken hours to end- and he pulls away, a thumb still on her face. “Do you really need to finish that?”

She stands up and takes his hand. “It can wait til morning.”

 

* * * *

 

“I had to do it,” he says, afterwards. “You know that, right?”

“Of course I know,” she says, equally quietly, her head resting on her chest. That was the person he was, and she wouldn’t love him as much if it wasn’t. She’d known that when she married him, after all. “I would have been there with you, if I’d known you were going.”

His hand is absently carding through her hair. “I’m glad you weren’t.”

She raises her head to level a glare at him. “Be careful where you take that sentence.”

He smiles, finally looking somewhat contrite. “I don’t want to see the cops hitting you.”

“I’d rather they didn’t hit _you_ ,” she retorts, “but they will and they did. If you’re going to get beat up, I’d prefer to get beat up with you.”

He chuckles. “Romantic.”

She huffs, laying her head back down on his chest. “Should have said ‘if you’re going to be foolish, I should be foolish with you?’”

A quiet exhalation lifts the hair off her neck. “You don’t think it’s foolish.”

“No, I don’t.” she admits. If she did- well if she did think it was foolish to attend the union meetings, or rail against the police officers who dragged women around by their hair or publish exposes that made some of the city’s ruling class furious, she’d be a very different person. They both would. That’s easy enough to accept. It’s harder when Jack comes home with bruises.

He really had frightened her earlier, when she’d seen the damage.

“Just tell me next time,” she says, tilting her head up to look at him. “Give me some warning. I at least want to know where you are when you’re getting beat up. Deal?”

He presses his lips to her forehead. “Deal.”


End file.
